Jack English with Larry Cottingham, at his home in Pine Valley in 2008. (Ivan Eberle, contributed photo)

Soquel >> Although he spent a decade living alone in a cabin six miles away from any road, Jack English got along well with whomever hiked out to his land in the Ventana Wilderness.

“He was seein’ people all the time!” said Mr. English’s son, Dennis. “It was a pretty popular place there.”

Jack English, a World War II veteran, a union carpenter, a violin bowmaker and an outdoorsman, died March 3 at the age of 96.

Mr. English first spotted the plot of land in Pine Valley, in the middle of rugged terrain in Ventana Wilderness, as a child. Mr. English and his wife, Mary, bought the parcel of land in the 1970s and he built the cabin with his son. The family visited the cabin frequently from their home in Soquel, which was where Mr. English grew up. When Mary died in 2001, Mr. English decided to move to his cabin by himself.

“When my mom died, he didn’t want to be part of mainstream society anymore,” Dennis English said.

English said his father used ponderosa pines that had been killed by 1977’s Marble Cone Fire to build the cabin.

English said his father was difficult to describe, but he considered him a naturalist and a person who had natural faith.

“My dad decided that nature is in charge, has always been in charge and mankind forgot about it,” he said. “He didn’t want to be part of that.”

Dennis English said his father grew jaded with society over time, which led to him moving to the cabin.

“He went to a place that filtered the people who came there,” he said. “It just sort of automatically happened that in Pine Valley, the trail is a filter to people. And people that don’t matter, that don’t care about anything real, they never go there.”

Mr. English first built the cabin because he loved Pine Valley. When asked how his father would describe the cabin at Pine Valley, Dennis English simply responded, “Home.”

Filmmaker Grace Jackson documented Mr. English’s story in “Jack.” He told her part of the appeal of Pine Valley was how it never changed.

“You’ve got to have some place you can get away from the turmoil,” he said in the film. “It’s not that I don’t like people, I do. But I don’t like swarms of them.”

Mr. English and his cabin were featured in the book “Cabin Porn,” which featured 10 special stories of cabins. The excerpt on Mr. English described him as a local legend among hikers and backpackers. One camper, who took shelter with Mr. English during a rainstorm, returned the next eight years to deliver Thanksgiving dinner.

“He was an amazing person,” Dennis English said. “A lot of people gravitated to him and came away with things that they felt were valuable in their own lives. So that’s pretty cool when someone can have that effect on people.”

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Steven Leckart, one of the authors of the book, wrote how Mr. English couldn’t stand to be anywhere outside of Pine Valley after his wife’s death. Their home in Soquel reminded him too much of Mary.

“I don’t care for progress. I’d rather go back. My wife was the same way,” Mr. English told Leckart. “When I lost her, it’s not been the same since.”

Dennis English said his father never got over Mary’s death.

“They stuck together, they worked together, they really love one another,” he said. “He repeatedly said he never appreciated her enough while she was alive and didn’t realize how valuable she was to him until she was gone.”

According to Dennis English, his mom enjoyed hunting and fishing, and loved Pine Valley, just as much as his dad.

“She really enjoyed the outdoors as well and she loved plants, flowers included of course,” he said.

One of Mary English’s pastimes were tending to her garden at the cabin in Pine Valley.

The two were married in March 1941, shortly before Mr. English went away to war.

“Rather than getting drafted, he enlisted,” English said of his father.

Mary English was pregnant when her husband went away to fight in World War II, but she had a miscarriage and doctors performed a hysterectomy. Mr. English viewed it as a sterilization of his wife by the state. Meanwhile, Mr. English partially lost his hearing and saw friends die in an accident during the war.

When Mr. English returned home, he moved to Alaska with his wife. He built a home in Soquel in the 1950s and they adopted Dennis in 1962.

As Dennis English learned to play the fiddle and honed his talent, Mr. English became a bowmaker to grow closer to his son.

“He used both traditional and nontraditional materials,” Dennis English said. “He experimented a lot.”

Despite dealing with gout late in life, Mr. English continued to make his bows and sold them for thousands of dollars.

Dennis English followed in his father’s footsteps and also creates bows. He said he cherishes the remaining bows his father made.

Nature, and a strong suggestion from firefighters, forced Mr. English to leave the cabin temporarily in 2008. The Basin Complex Fire got close enough that it forced him to reluctantly evacuate the cabin.

“I wanted to stay, but you can’t predict what a fire is going to do, and I understand that (the firefighters) were trying to do what was best for me,” Mr. English told The Herald at the time. “And I didn’t want to jeopardize anybody else.”

After a heart attack in late 2012, he moved out of the cabin and stayed in Soquel. Although he later visited the cabin by helicopter, Mr. English hiked to the cabin his final time the day before his 93rd birthday. He made the 5.5-mile hike, rising in elevation about 1,000 feet, in three hours and 15 minutes.

“That should be a lesson to all the people who come from their desk jobs and take six or seven hours to get in there and think they’re dying, in their 40s,” Dennis English said. “He was almost 93.”

He hiked in many times between the ages of 80 and 90.

Dennis English will take that hike soon. Mr. English will return to the cabin soon as well. His wishes were for his son to mix his ashes with his wife’s and spread them near the cabin.